Max Allan Collins biography

Max Allan Collins (born March 3, 1948) is an American mystery writer. He has written novels, screenplays, comic books, comic strips, trading cards, short stories, movie novelizations and historical fiction. He wrote the graphic novel Road to Perdition (which was developed into a film in 2002), created the comic book private eye Ms. Tree, and took over writing the Dick Tracy comic strip from creator Chester Gould and one of the Batman comic books for a time. He wrote books to expand on the Dark Angel TV series. He has also written books and comics based on the TV series franchise CSI. More recently, he has written a book, Buried Deep, based on the TV Series Bones.

Collins's longest running series and arguably his best known work is his Nathan Heller series. Heller is a Chicago private investigator who gets involved in famous crimes and meets famous people of the 1930s and 1940s, including Orson Welles, Frank Nitti, and Sally Rand. The first novel in this historical fiction series, True Detective, won the 1984 Shamus Award for Best P.I. Hardcover from the Private Eye Writers of America. Collins won his second Shamus in 1992 for the Heller novel Stolen Away, an account of the Lindbergh kidnapping. His 1999 novel Flying Blind sees Heller investigate the disappearance of Amelia Earhart, along the way becoming romantically involved with her. The most recent book in this series, Chicago Confidential, moved the action into the 1950s. Collins has recently announced that he has completed a new entry in the series, due out in June 2011, about Marilyn Monroe. He has begun research on a Nate Heller novel about the JFK assassination.[